As effective and traditional methods for treating diseases caused by uncontrolled gene control, particularly diseases referred to as cancers, methods of removing tumors by surgical excision have been used. However, where primary cancer is metastasized to other organs, surgical excision is impossible and anticancer chemotherapies have been used. As anticancer agents for chemotherapy, monomolecular compounds synthesized by organic or inorganic methods have been mainly used. Such anticancer drugs have been developed and used against cancer diseases in order mainly to effectively target proteins that disturb signaling pathways by overexpression of phosphorylation proteins included in signaling pathways, thereby inhibiting the activity of the proteins. Such traditional chemotherapies may cause many side effects, because anticancer drugs used are artificially synthesized foreign substances and target already overexpressed proteins.
The development of therapeutic drugs to replace the traditional chemotherapies has been attempted in various ways. One of such attempts is the use of small interfering RNA (hereinafter referred to as siRNA) (Iorns, E., Lord, C. J., Turner, N. & Ashworth, A. Utilizing RNA interference to enhance cancer drug discovery. Nat Rev Drug Discov 6, 556-68. 2007). siRNA is a single-stranded RNA consisting of 16 to 27 nucleotides and serves as one component of a ribonucleoprotein complex known as an RNA Induced Silencing Complex (RISC) in cells (Tomari, Y. & Zamore, P. D. Perspective: machines for RNAi. Genes Dev 19, 517-29, 2005, Chu, C. Y. & Rana, T. M. Potent RNAi by short RNA triggers. Rna 14, 1714-9, 2008, Mittal, V. Improving the efficiency of RNA interference in mammals. Nat Rev Genet 5, 355-65, 2004, Reynolds, A. et al. Rational siRNA design for RNA interference. Nat Biotechnol 22, 326-30. 2004). The RISC functions as RNA scissors to cleave messenger RNA (hereinafter referred to as mRNA) to thereby inhibit the production of protein from mRNA. siRNA contained in the RISC may bind to mRNA having a sequence complementary to the siRNA sequence to form double-stranded RNA, and the RISC may act as RNA scissors to cleave target mRNA so that the mRNA can no longer function as a template that repeatedly produces protein.
The siRNA-based anticancer drugs as described above are considered advanced over the monomolecular anticancer drugs in that they cleave mRNA before protein production and use RNA and the intracellular RISC pathway. However, there is a side effect that cannot be solved even by the siRNA-based technology (Jackson, A. L. et al. Widespread siRNA “off-target” transcript silencing mediated by seed region sequence complementarity. Rna 12, 1179-87, 2006., Jackson, A. L. et al. Position-specific chemical modification of siRNAs reduces “off-target” transcript silencing. Rna 12, 1197-205, 2006., Jackson, A. L. et al. Expression profiling reveals off-target gene regulation by RNAi. Nat Biotechnol 21, 635-7, 2003., Nielsen, C. B. et al. Determinants of targeting by endogenous and exogenous microRNAs and siRNAs. Rna 13, 1894-910, 2007., Peek, A. S. & Behlke, M. A. Design of active small interfering RNAs. Curr Opin Mol Ther 9, 110-8, 2007.). This side effect is a phenomenon known as the off-target effect. As described above, siRNA acts to cleave mRNA having a sequence complementary to the siRNA sequence. However, siRNA may also bind to and cleave a non-target mRNA which is not complementary to the entire sequence of the siRNA, but is complementary to only a portion of the siRNA sequence. This phenomenon is known as the off-target effect.
To overcome the above-described technical disadvantage of siRNA-based anticancer agents, studies on the use of microRNA (hereinafter referred to as “miRNA”) as therapeutic agents are in progress (Agostini, M. & Knight, R. A. miR-34: from bench to bedside. Oncotarget 5, 872-81, 2014., van Rooij, E., Purcell, A. L. & Levin, A. A. Developing MicroRNA Therapeutics. Circulation Research 110, 496-507, 2012., Burnett, J. C. & Rossi, J. J. RNA-based therapeutics: current progress and future prospects. Chem Biol 19, 60-71, 2012., Dangwal, S. & Thum, T. microRNA therapeutics in cardiovascular disease models. Annu Rev Pharmacol Toxicol 54, 185-203, 2014.). miRNA is an RNA consisting of 16 to 27 nucleotides and is classified as protein non-coding RNA against a messenger RNA (mRNA) that is translated into protein (Carthew, R. W. & Sontheimer, E. J. Origins and Mechanisms of miRNAs and siRNAs. Cell 136, 642-55, 2009., MacFarlane, L.-A. & Murphy, P. R. MicroRNA: Biogenesis, Function and Role in Cancer. Current Genomics 11, 537-561, 2010., Bartel, D. P. MicroRNAs: target recognition and regulatory functions. Cell 136, 215-33, 2009.). miRNA is found in the genome of higher animal and plant cells, and is known to play a key role in regulating cell metabolisms and functions, including cell production, growth, differentiation and death. Until now, about 2000 kinds of miRNAs have been found in the human genome, and the functions of a considerable amount of the miRNAs are not yet known.
miRNA is transcribed from the genome into RNA by RNA polymerase known as Pol II, and the initial length of the miRNA is various without being specified (Carthew, R. W. & Sontheimer, E. J. Origins and Mechanisms of miRNAs and siRNAs. Cell 136, 642-55, 2009., Brodersen, P. & Voinnet, O. Revisiting the principles of microRNA target recognition and mode of action. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 10, 141-148, 2009). This is attributable to the positional variety of miRNA in the genome. This is because miRNA is produced in various ways, including the case in which miRNA located in an intron (mRNA non-coding region) is transcribed at the same time point as mRNA production and in the case in which miRNA located in the intergenic region of the genome is transcribed individually (Malone, C. D. & Hannon, G. J. Small RNAs as guardians of the genome. Cell 136, 656-68, 2009.). miRNA produced in the initial stage as described above is known as primary microRNA (miR). Primary miR is processed into precursor miR (precursor miRNA, or pre-miR) by, for example, RNase known as intranuclear Drosha (Bartel, D. P. MicroRNAs: target recognition and regulatory functions. Cell 136, 215-33, 2009). Pre-miR has an RNA hairpin structure and consists of about 70-80 nucleotides. Pre-miR in the cellular nucleus is transported from the nucleus to the cytosol by exportin protein or the like, and is further processed in the cytosol by another RNase known as Dicer to thereby produce double-stranded mature microRNA (hereinafter, miR described without a qualifier means mature miR) consisting of 16-27 nucleotides. One RNA strand of double-stranded miR is selected, activated by binding to the ribonucleoprotein complex RISC, and binds to target mRNA based on the sequence of miR.
Generally, mRNA can be largely divided into three regions based on whether or not these regions are involved in protein coding: a coding region containing protein coding translation information, and 5′-UTR (Un-Translated Region) and 3′-UTR which have no protein coding information. While siRNA that induces cleavage of target mRNA having a sequence complementary thereto acts regardless of the 5′-UTR, 3′-UTR and coding region of mRNA, miR binds mainly to the 3′-UTR (Carthew, R. W. & Sontheimer, E. J. Origins and Mechanisms of miRNAs and siRNAs. Cell 136, 642-55, 2009., Bartel, D. P. MicroRNAs: target recognition and regulatory functions. Cell 136, 215-33, 2009.).
In addition to the difference in the position of binding to mRNA, the characteristic difference between siRNA and miRNA is that siRNA binds mainly to mRNA having a sequence complementary to the entire sequence of siRNA, whereas miRNA recognizes target mRNA, mainly through a seed region sequence located 2-8 nucleotides from the 5′ end of the miRNA and having a limited length. Thus, even when the entire sequence of miRNA is not completely complementary to the sequence of a target sequence and contains a non-complementary sequence portion, the activity of the miRNA is not affected by the non-complementary sequence portion (Bartel, D. P. MicroRNAs: target recognition and regulatory functions. Cell 136, 215-33, 2009). Since the seed region is 6-8 nucleotides in length, there are various kinds of mRNAs whose 3′ UTR has a sequence complementary to the seed region, and for this region, several kinds of mRNAs can be simultaneously controlled using one kind of miRNA. This nature of miRNA enables the miRNA to function as an efficient regulator in the control of many cellular physiological aspects, including cell division, growth, differentiation and death. Furthermore, the function of miRNA as a regulator provides an advantage in achieving effective anticancer effects. This is because miRNA can inhibit expression of a number of oncogenes at the same time, whereas siRNA aims to inhibit expression of a single gene.
The 3′ UTR of many mRNAs contains a portion to which one or more miRNAs can bind. According to bioinformatics calculation, it is known that about 30% of all mRNAs is regulated by miRNA.
The fact that miRNA acts as a major regulator in signaling pathways can be seen from the fact that miRNA plays an important role in major diseases, including cancer (MacFarlane, L.-A. & Murphy, P. R. MicroRNA: Biogenesis, Function and Role in Cancer. Current Genomics 11, 537-561. 2010., Malone, C. D. & Hannon, G. J. Small RNAs as guardians of the genome. Cell 136, 656-68. 2009., Nicoloso, M. S., Spizzo, R., Shimizu, M., Rossi, S. & Calin, G. A. MicroRNAs—the micro steering wheel of tumour metastases. Nat Rev Cancer 9, 293-302. 2009., Landi, D., Gemignani, F. & Landi, S. Role of variations within microRNA-binding sites in cancer. Mutagenesis 27, 205-10. 2012.). In fact, several studies revealed that expression patterns of miRNAs in cancer cells greatly differ from expression patterns of miRNAs in normal cells. In addition, it is known that expression patterns of miRNAs greatly differ depending on primary organs in which cancer occurred. Specifically, various cancers, including lung cancer, liver cancer, skin cancer and blood cancer, show characteristic miRNA expression patterns according to the primary organs, indicating that miRNA plays an important role in cancer biology. In particular, it is known that the expression levels of miRNAs in cancer cells are generally lower than their expression levels in normal cells.
Based on the deep connection of miRNA in cancer, it has recently been attempted to use miRNAs as anticancer therapeutic agents. For example, miRNA, named “miR-34a”, is under clinical trials to verify its abilities to inhibit cancer cell proliferation and induce cancer cell apoptosis (Wiggins, J. F. et al. Development of a lung cancer therapeutic based on the tumor suppressor microRNA-34. Cancer Res 70, 5923-30. 2010., Bader, A. G. et al. miR-34 Regulated Genes and Pathways as Targets for Therapeutic Intervention. Google Patents, 2009., Hermeking, H. The miR-34 family in cancer and apoptosis. Cell Death Differ 17, 193-9. 2010., Chang, T. C. et al. Transactivation of miR-34a by p53 broadly influences gene expression and promotes apoptosis. Mol Cell 26, 745-52. 2007.).
Accordingly, the present inventors have made extensive efforts to identify miRNA having better abilities to inhibit cancer cell proliferation and induce cancer cell apoptosis than miR-34a which is under clinical trials. As a result, the present inventors have identified miR-3670, miR-8078 and miR-4477a, which have excellent anticancer efficacy, and have found that these miRNAs exhibit anticancer effects by effectively inhibiting expressions of a number of genes known as oncogenes, thereby competing the present invention.